- From top to bottom, the management consistently fails to show strong leadership and effective problem solving ability. Some key departments are full of bureaucratic roadblocks which insure that suppliers are made to pay for Cummins' mistakes, and employees don't have access to the tools they need.
- Upper management laments that Cummins has difficulty recruiting and keeping talented employees, but little is done to identify and reward the good people they have. Far more emphasis is placed on media campaigns like diversity, community involvement, and green initiatives than nurturing their core business and the employees they need to make it work. When it comes time to make cuts, and this happens with regularity in a cyclical business like Cummins, the decision as to who is let go appears to be almost random. I have seen competent, well intentioned, and articulate people shown the door, while lesser employees sail through without a hitch. Scuttlebutt surrounding firings almost always speaks of office politics, personality conflicts, or even how much money the person made rather than job performance. For most of my tenure there, Cummins had a forced ranking system for the performance reviews of salaried staff that mandated a certain number of people would get the short stick at each review cycle. They have since dialed back this practice, but the fact that they clung to it for so long says a lot about how sensitive they really were to their employees' quality of life.
- Location. Columbus is a small city of about 40,000 people and is not part of a larger metro area. Indianapolis and Bloomington are each about an hour drive, so the time and expense of visiting an area with more attractions is not insignificant. One might think that its small size and remote location might make Columbus a warm and neighborly place to be. Unfortunately, I found that a sort of reticent cynicism pervades the local culture, and of all the places I have lived, Columbus has proved the most challenging for meeting people, making friends and even finding friendly and honest local services. Those who buy a house in Columbus will almost certainly be faced with the difficult and expensive prospect of selling that house and relocating at some point in the future.
